Misfits
by littledarkangelhippie
Summary: It becomes harder and harder to fill the role of a perfect warrior the older she gets, but perfection is only a theory, and she learns this quickest of all. (Beruani)
1. Chapter 1

**A.N.****: Okay, so, apparently I started this two and a half months ago (I say "apparently" because I have no recollection of this at all, I literally found this on my files and was like, "Holy shit, what, where did this come from?" And then I just sort of decided to finish this. So. Yeah.)**

**I split it up into two chapters because it came out being a little longer than I anticipated. **

**Warning****: Mature content. (I mean, why else is it rated M?) **

**Disclaimer****: I do not own ****_Shingeki no Kyojin_.**

Annie becomes aware that she is not like the others when she is only eight years old.

Her future is already planned before she ever agrees to it—she'd never had a say in it, no matter how much the memory of her sobbing father says she had—and she is made aware of what they expect from her long before she can even recite the entire alphabet by herself. She learns to accept it as she has everything else, and keeps her words to herself in favor of speaking out her actual thoughts on things.

She learns to remain silent.

She learns even quicker that her opinions do not matter anyway.

To detach from the body is simpler said than done, but she manages well enough. If she will be forced to be a warrior she would prefer to be the best or be nothing at all, and this is a vow she repeats to herself every day for as long as she can stand it. All she has to do is fight, remember what her father taught her, defend, pick herself back up, persist—the cycle repeats for as long as it has to.

She becomes aware, however, that she is not like the others.

When they tell her that humans are the enemy, she is immediately afraid.

She begins to realize how human she _really_ is, then. How her lungs can only hold so much air and how sleep can steal away so much from her, how loud her stomach growls when there isn't enough food to go around and how she craves for the warmth offered by a simple embrace from another. She begins to notice how her heart beats in her ribcage, how heavy her tongue feels in her mouth, how the fine yellow hairs on her arms rise when it gets cold.

She cannot bring herself to hate these things, no matter how human they are.

She cannot bring herself to hate humans, no matter how much they tell her to.

She becomes aware of how different she is from everyone else at a very young age.

They tell her how strong she is becoming, how vital her power will be in their mission, and feels something cold and unpleasant turn in her stomach slowly.

To detach from the body is less simple than she remembers it being.

Her mind latches itself onto her nerves, onto her bones and muscles and flesh, and she sees how the wounds on her body close up, how the bruises fade away, how her fingers grow right back. The pain remains as a ghost—her mind knows it should still be there but it isn't and this is harder to comprehend than anyone will think to admit and she doesn't want to be the first—it haunts her every joint, her every thought, _there_, knotted up inside of her.

They tell her she is their finest warrior.

She is more afraid than she can possibly explain.

~~...~~X~~...~~

There's something innately fascinating about the world she is born into. How the trees can grow from just a few measly drops of water, how their branches can span out like great big wings stretching out across the sky, how their leaves can burst out in wild sprigs or soft little feathery clusters, and how their roots can twist up so deep in the ground there's no hope of ever pulling them free. How the sky will sprawl out further than the eye can see or how it can squeeze itself down to no more than a few yards at a time when a person doesn't pay enough attention. How grass can grow so long it will tickle a person's legs, or how flowers can bloom in bunches of color, bright and pretty and fragile, in even the darkest places.

How easily it can all be ruined in just a few short moments of carelessness.

She cannot count the number of times she's ever tried to swallow the world into herself with her eyes alone. It becomes an impossibility the more she begins to realize that it continues on past the forests around her hometown, that it does not end where her limitations do. She attempts to drink all of it in whenever she's left alone; the ants marching their way up their tiny red hills dug into the hard dirt: the shiny lines drying on the bark of the old oaks that stick to her fingers when she touches them and tastes bitter and unpleasant when she taps her tongue hesitantly to the tips; the lines in the leaves and the golden green they glow when she holds them up to the sun. She tries to grasp everything in all at once, but her hands are too small—_she's _too small, and this fact makes something cold run down her spine slowly.

There's something indisputably terrifying learning that the world she is born into is much larger than she'll ever know.

Those short moments she has alone, between rigorous training sessions and the constant relaying of information she couldn't wrap her mind around, she traces her fingers across the powdery surfaces of smooth stones unburied from the ground; she presses her ear into the soft undergrowth to hear the beating of the earth underneath; she closes her eyes and pretends she is much bigger than any of it.

Those few seconds she steals away, slight cracks left in the walls being built up inside of her, she breathes in the morning mist of early spring, she lifts her hands up toward the sky to watch their outline against the light, caresses a single blade of grass between her thumb and forefinger, follows the paths left over by critters she never sees beyond small glimpses in the brush too many meters away from her reach.

The first time she turns into a titan, she almost feels as if the world isn't as big as she'd thought.

They tell her she is perfect.

She feels something sink inside of her.

~~...~~X~~...~~

He is beautiful.

He is beautiful in that way that the soil beneath her feet is beautiful, full of uncharted promises and untouched vitality—full of silent life and timid thoughts. Something about his warm-colored skin and olive-tinted eyes is very lovely to her. It reminds her of the trees, how they can survive from so little and grow up so much, or of the ponds in the middle of the forest, swirling smoothly, unmoved, on their own. He is beautiful in that way that the world is beautiful, overlooked and unappreciated.

She wants to ruin him, the same way a simple act of carelessness could to the earth.

She makes it some mission to torment him, leaves only the most brutal of her maneuvers for him.

But something about the way his body molds to hers, how he bends and gives and falls easily beneath her, makes the entire process itself entirely meaningless.

She comes to learn that things will never change, that she will never fit in quite right with the rest.

The fact that the blistering heat of his warm-colored skin somehow imprints itself into her memory finalizes this to her in her mind. The green of his eyes burns into the backs of hers and the smile he gives—so much fainter than that of the morning mist in early winters or the feathery touch of undone spiderwebs strewn between two branches—carves itself into her throat and forms a lump she cannot speak around. She settles for punching him in the jaw.

This doesn't solve her problem, but it at least knocks him unconscious.

Humans are supposed to be the enemy, and everyone she knows knows this.

She isn't sure how a person can be evil in her eyes when they reflect back all the things she's learned _isn't_.

~~...~~X~~...~~

The problem with fitting herself into this role they've cut out for her is the dawning understanding that she is ever-changing. The human body has the ability to mold itself into anything it wants almost overnight, much like wind or water can do to stone over time or how the quaking of the earth can shift things out of place and jostle them into others as easily as clouds drifting across skies. She notes the changes to herself when she is alone—split seconds at a time; paranoia is another living entity to those trapped within the walls after all.

Her clothes fit her differently and her body aches in different places at different times. She is amazed by the alterations, can press her fingers into her own skin and wonder if it was like this before (_was that freckle there last time? I can't remember_).

She struggles, then, to cramp herself down to what they have always wanted, to bend and bow and try to fit into their idea of perfection—she was once perfection to them, and she isn't sure she _can_ be anymore. The obligations strung upon this role have tangled up too deep into her nerves she wants to let go of them already.

She knows, somewhere in the back of her mind, that she is only a child—no older than thirteen, really—and she knows there are certain things people her age should be doing.

Her fate is set the day she is born.

She knows this better than anyone.

But it falls apart easier than she could've predicted when an older boy—a _human—_tells her that her eyes are pretty.

~~...~~X~~...~~

The worst part, she thinks, is that nobody is ever there to explain anything to her.

She has no words to describe how she feels right then. Nothing more than a vague lean toward revulsion, fear, helplessness—if someone were to ask her, she may have been too scared to recall it. Something inside of her tells her this will remain with her for as long as she lives.

She is glad that she will not live long, then, that her fate has been set since the day she was born and that nothing at all can save her from it.

There is something innately fascinating about the tint of night falling across the world. How the trees shoot up higher than she can see and how the branches turn to claws scraping their way across the empty obsidian sky, how their leaves stain themselves into the background like droplets of ink on an unfinished letter. How the wind feels colder, how the air hangs heavier, how the bark scratches into her back, the material of her shirt hiking up the crevices of her spine.

How her body aches afterward.

Nobody thought to ever warn her how her abilities may come back to bite her, times like these. That the evidence would be gone by the time she woke up the next morning, tucked into her bed, as if nothing at all had happened.

When she mumbles it, in some vague form of question formed as a theory she tries to detach from herself, to the group of girls in her cabin gathered for a round of pointless gossip, they tell her it doesn't count—that no damage can be done from just _dry humping_, that no harm can be caused from the act alone, that no violence will be left behind inside of her.

She isn't sure what to say or think or feel—something in the form of _sick_ comes to mind, but she cannot speak it aloud to the others. She lets herself fall back into silence and dares not broach the subject again, lest they assume the worst and realize the truth of it.

For a moment or two, she thinks perhaps she understands why the enemy must be _human_.

~~...~~X~~...~~

She imagines a pendulum, within her, swinging back and forth in large, slow sweeps that tear out everything left behind by everything bad she's ever come across.

It helps to clear her mind sometimes.

It may not be healthy, but she starts to count the days until they're caught, until she dies—she ticks the days off mentally and only sometimes feels surprised when nothing happens at all.

It helps to keep her occupied, beyond the useless attempts at filling in her role.

"What's with you?" Reiner asks one day. The muscles in his shoulders tense when she tries to move past him, but when he moves to put her between himself and the wall (if only to keep her attention long enough to get answers) Bertholdt steps between them; mediating, as he always has.

She tries not to remember, with him so near, how his warm-colored skin made her feel when they were younger, or how his olive eyes had once reminded her of the ponds she never finds anymore in the forests; she's afraid to go into the woods any further than necessary. "Nothing," she snaps and backs away from the both of them. They turn to look at her fully, and she feels trapped by their stares, feels smaller than she knows herself to be faced with their monstrous heights and their strong bodies.

She's afraid, although she won't ever admit it, of their potential threat. She knows they'll never hurt her—Reiner is too loyal of a comrade and Bertholdt is far too gentle—but the fear still remains.

She isn't sure what's worse, the fact that they know something's wrong or the fact that she can't hide it as well as she thought.

"Hey," Reiner says, taking a step toward her. His eyes are tight with doubt and his tone speaks of it clearly, and yet it's laced with the type of worry she knows will only push her further away. "If something's wrong, you can tell us. You know that, Annie."

"Yeah," she grits out, slipping away from them. "I know."

She tries not to cling to the kindly concern in those green eyes, watching her silently, and hurries away to somewhere she can quietly piece herself back into place.

~~...~~X~~...~~

It's a delicate time for her, and this becomes quite evident at some point. She never thinks to investigate it any further until her body begins to crave things she isn't sure how to feel about.

At night, her dreams have taken a new shape, and it traces back to the things that make her knot up her thoughts into indecipherable enigmas best left untouched and unexplored—except, _except_, the images are replaced by other things. _Other _things, like swirling pools of green and the blistering imprints of warm-colored skin; easing the pain scraping into her back too deep for her to take.

The fear and the helplessness is replaced by something soft enough and real enough to touch or hold—she wonders if this is how it should've always been.

Her fifteen year old mind has crafted a solution to her problems and she snatches up the very edges before it can escape her grasp altogether. This is dangerous, and she is smart enough to know that—she's never been what one would call _ignorant_, but she's an amazing liar and years upon years of playing some unfit role has made her out to be quite skilled enough to fool even herself. And that's all this really is, fooling herself into thinking—maybe, hopefully, perhaps—things can change, if she tries hard enough.

If only she can force herself into it.

Bertholdt is a fine specimen of a male, she thinks. He is shaping into a modestly handsome young man and it shows very clearly to every other female willing to look close enough. He is tall and lean, and what his loose-fitting clothes hide ordinarily cannot be hidden as easily in their uniforms, and she's surprisingly relieved by this. The hard lines of his body are incredibly appealing—she, who has come to appreciate the subtle curves of her figure, the softness paralleling her muscle, finds beauty in his broadness, his largeness, his undiscovered grace, his untarnished innocence—and the color of his skin is the unarguable finishing touch, which perfects the image in her eyes.

Bertholdt fits the description her mind creates almost too easily—one would think it was made for him, but she will never admit that—and she figures this can only be coincidence.

When she corners him one night, he only smiles his timid smile and asks, very gently, "Are you feeling better, Annie?"

She is almost too surprised by his concern to proceed appropriately. He hasn't changed out of his uniform, although his jacket has been discarded somewhere. His smoky gray shirt creases softly against him; she focuses on this, the way it dips as he breathes, how it expands across his chest. She wonders how it would feel to touch him. "I want to ask a favor," she says, and does not bother to see the creasing in his brow, how he notices her ignoring his question.

"Sure, Annie," he says, kindly, "anything."

This is a very delicate, dangerous time in her life.

He only protests once or twice—perhaps more, but he is, after all, a teenaged boy, and what sort of control can he possibly have?—before he lets her have her way with him.

(It's funny, she thinks, because it's usually reversed, isn't it?)

The bed creaks loudly and she's sure, if not for the celebrations the older trainees always hold—only an excuse to drink without penalty—they would've been caught by now. He bites on his fist to keep quiet, but he moans around it anyway, gasps through his tightly grit teeth. His eyes swirl with want now, tortured and pleasured and afraid, and his face is flushed a deep pink. She curls her fingers into the sleeves of his shirt, right over his shoulders, and presses her knees into the mattress on either side of him.

Nothing bad comes from just _dry humping_, right?

She feels him throbbing through their layers of clothes, wonders if he aches as bad as she does between her thighs—there's something oddly wonderful and horrible about this entire situation; she wants to _feel _him, but the fact of the matter remains, her mind has built something to help her out of this and it isn't going as she planned. She knew it never would, but it scares her anyway.

She rolls her hips against him, feels his rhythm falter and break—watches his knuckles turn white as his fingers thread into the sheets, the folds and shadows of his shirt pulling taut across his torso, sliding up as he follows her pace determinedly; the aching in her core flares when the ash-hued cloth shifts and creases over his stomach. She tries not to remember how hot his skin can burn hers, how the powdery feel of unburied stones can intertwine with the feel of his flesh, hard and painfully real beneath her fingers.

When he breathes her name, she is reminded why the enemy _cannot_ be _human_.

~~...~~X~~...~~

The biggest problem with having to grow up too fast is the fact that no one is ever around to explain anything at all.

The questions come in any form or shape or manner they want, while she sleeps or lies awake, while she eats or while she trains; they're always there to permeate the silence left over every day yet closer to their goal. Why she feels this way when a group of girls stare at her for too long, or why her skin prickles when she notices a boy looking at her a certain way. Why she starts to see the body behind the clothing as more than what it should be, or why she begins to fill herself up with these feelings of inferiority—inescapably always _there—_whenever a girl with a curvier body or prettier hair passes her by on her bad days.

Why she starts to twist up her reality around him so that the questions cannot reach her anymore.

No one is there to explain why he makes her feel like this.

His fingers leave indentations behind she thinks will never fade, and his eyes pierce into her like sharp-edged knives or broken glass; she thinks she'll scar if he stares too long. His voice reverberates like the beating of the earth beneath her ear and she wants to tear herself away because he reminds her of all the things she's learned is good and all the things she's been forced to think is bad. It is confusing and disjointing and she can't grasp enough to make sense of it.

"Annie," he mumbles around her mouth—she's shoved him back against the wall and he's slid down low enough that she can reach him without stretching up too far at all, his hands grip hers as she tries to tug his jacket off his shoulders—"someone will see us..."

"_Shh_," she manages to whisper, presses her lips to the corner of his and hopes he will somehow hear the plea she's screaming in her mind, that he will not leave her wanting any longer than she has to.

The human body has the unique ability to torture itself for the sake of pride, and she has built herself up from the ground with it.

It may be selfish, but she wishes no one else in the world will ever know this secret side of Bertholdt—so fervent, so tender, so completely _unlike _him it's almost beautiful. She wants to keep this part of him hidden, locked up inside of her like the shredded bits of herself, lost in the seasons she's forgetting to count now.

When he kisses her, he lets himself trickle into it slowly, steadily, lips moving against hers so gently, as if she'd break, until it tips, suddenly, and his tongue scorches across the straight edges of her teeth, and it tangles up with hers tight enough to break something somewhere—she doesn't think to think it through quite yet; he's swallowing up all her sanity and she can't do anything to stop it.

The worst thing about growing up too fast is that no one is there to warn you about anything at all, and nobody ever warned Annie about _this_.

He leaves a mark on her throat, red and bright and undeniably _there_.

For some reason, this helps ease the questions off of her shoulders for a while.

~~...~~X~~...~~

**A.N.****: It's subtle, but, yes, Annie was molested at some point (in this chapter). Does it matter? Well, I guess it's up to you to decide on that, because I'm honestly too lazy to say.**

**Let me know what you think about this chapter, leave a review please!**

**Next chapter is a little longer, but it's nothing you can't handle. (Psh, imagine this being split up into _three _chapters. Ha, nope.)**


	2. Chapter 2

**A.N.****: Eating oranges when you're sick boosts your immune system because they're high in vitamin C. **

**Warning****: Well. Yeah.**

**Disclaimer****: I do not own ****_Shingeki no Kyojin_. **

"What's up with you guys these days?" Reiner asks one night, tearing off a piece of bread to dip into the thick sauce the cooks refer to as _gravy_, although she gets a feeling they're lying about it.

She stares at him morosely, pausing in her task of separating the cooling peas from the corn on her plate. She knows what he means—as does Bertholdt, shifting nervously beside her and sipping quickly at his water; as if this will draw the attention away from him further—it's hard to hide the evidence now, the bite marks she leaves on his warm-colored skin, on his throat or beneath the collar of his shirt, after their stolen moments together—Reiner might've caught sight of them once or twice before they faded away—and there's a new energy enveloping the both of them, barely noticeable to all but their comrade, who can read them better than they had given him credit for. Despite this, she replies with, "What?" Her tone drips with malice and her eyes narrow fiercely.

"Don't start," Reiner warns, turning the piece of bread in his large hands. "Look, if you guys wanna go down this road, it's fine. I'm glad you guys can find some peace of mind, really. But don't go sneaking around like that." He lowers his eyes, raising the food to his mouth slowly. "We gotta be open with each other, you know."

"Alright," she says, setting down her fork. Straightens her back, lifts her chin. "Bertholdt and I are fucking."

Reiner chokes around his food and Bertholdt coughs up his water.

"I—what?" Reiner wipes at his mouth, eyes wide.

Bertholdt, still coughing, waves his hands and shakes his head. "We're—no, we're not—"

"Yet," she amends, folding her arms.

A deep shade of red paints his face, and he mumbles, "_Annie_..."

But Reiner is grinning, dips another bit of bread in the so-called gravy. "You're really something, Annie."

(She only wonders about this later, when she's lying down to sleep—wonders if they've always known she wasn't like the rest, wonders if they ever saw it, her doubt.)

She doesn't know who speaks the words, or for what reason, but they still cause a warmth to bloom inside of her.

"I'm glad."

~~...~~X~~...~~

The only thing she can focus on is his closeness, the proximity it demands from them. He presses so close his flesh leaves blisters all across her—the worst part, she thinks, is that her skin will heal before she can ever examine them herself—his breaths mingle with hers, flutters her hair, tickles her ears, soaks in deep into her skin. When he moves, it shakes her so completely she loses her thoughts too often to stop. When he touches her, the contact burns its way into her system until it wrinkles and blackens and crumples up into ashes.

It doesn't hurt the same way they always said it would. There's no blood or tears or any actual _pain_ in general. She feels far too small, breakable, fragile, _vulnerable_, beneath him. Her legs spread apart too far and he stretches her too much—feels like he'll rip her apart if he moves too fast, feels like he'll shatter her into pieces if he's careless enough—but he is gentle and it eases her down into something better, something _good_. Her legs wrap around his waist, and they fit into the hard curves formed by his muscles almost too easily. The stretch, she thinks, isn't so bad anymore when he's kissing her so softly, when he's touching her so tenderly.

She remembers a time when she wanted to ruin him—in that way that a simple act of carelessness can to the earth—and wonders if this is perhaps the way to accomplish that.

His face buries into the crook of her neck and the noises he makes are feeble and imploring—as if she's holding his whole life in her hands and she's liable to shatter it at any time she feels like; maybe she will, just to spite him—and his body bows over her in the sort of way that reminds her of a praying man, worshiping some god she's never believed in.

This could be the worst thing she'll ever do to him.

Or perhaps it's the other way around.

She doesn't know. She doesn't _want _to know.

She clings onto him, hands searching for a place to settle, as he begins a beat she can follow easily; something slow and careful. His hips undulate down toward her, and she finds she can repeat the movements almost effortlessly—_almost_, if not for how heavily he presses down on her, how his closeness causes hot friction between them; against the sheets, against his skin—the pace eases the ache at her core some, allows her the space to focus her mind on other things. It might've been a different case had he gone a little harder, had he listened to his body's pleads; the amount of control it must take for him to _not _hurt her must be far more extensive than he's letting her see.

His trembling gives it away, his clenched jaw, his tight fists twisted into the sheets by her shoulders; it is evident, how difficult it is for him to hold back, just by the furrowing in his brow and the beads of sweat forming at his temples.

She is surprised she can read him this easily.

When she wipes the perspiration from his forehead, he lets out a gust of air she isn't sure how long he'd been holding. "Annie," he mumbles, pulling back enough to look her in the eye; his pace has slowed so much he's hardly moving anymore. Even in the darkness, she can still see how wide his pupils have dilated, how deep the blush on his face has gotten and how far down it reaches. The moonlight slanting through the boarded windows paint him just enough to trace the features he wants to hide so much. "I'm sorry... I've never done this before..."

Her eyes move down his chest, down the deep carvings of muscle gained from a life time of harsh discipline and the fine hints of his ribcage expanding and contracting beneath his warm-colored skin, the shadows dipping into every crevice they can and the thin strands of hair trailing along his lower abdomen, down between them. It is a strange sight, she'll confess, seeing them, _connected_. Things seem to fall into place—they fit together like two slabs of earth, quaking, shifting and jostling; like the shards of a broken crystal being pieced back up; it's scary knowing how easily they can come together like this, how things can come to be in such a way—and suddenly, everything makes sense.

And suddenly, nothing makes sense at all.

(_Can humans really be the enemy? Look at how well they fit each other, it must be fated somehow_.)

(_It must be. Somehow._)

She laughs, breathlessly. She's thinking too much again. He's still staring at her, waiting for her response. Is he afraid of what she'll say? Is _this _how she'll ruin him? By breaking his heart?

What will she say?

_You're too small?_

_You're too sweaty?_

_You're so stupid?_

A list of insults bubbles up her throat to lash at him, but all that comes out is, "You're so beautiful."

His blush deepens, and she imagines flowers blooming just beneath his skin—how they can grow, vivid and bright, in even the darkest places—and he whispers, "Y—_You're _beautiful..."

She wants to punch and kiss him at the very same time, and only manages to press a fist over his pounding heart and raise herself up to brush her lips, briefly, across his lower one; his lips part against hers and a breath burns over her mouth just before she lets herself fall back into the pillows. He follows her, molds their mouths together quickly, slips his tongue across her own smoothly. She can taste something sweet, maybe the pie they'd been served earlier, maybe the natural taste of his own mouth. She can't tell.

"Just keeping going," she says around his kisses, turns her face toward the ceiling as he moves down her throat to suck on her pulse point. "I've never done this, either. Whether you're good or not doesn't matter."

"I want it to be good for you," he mumbles against her skin, but begins to rock his hips very slightly against her. "I want you to...finish, too..."

"Have you thought about this a lot?" she asks, reaches up to wrap her arms around his neck and lifts her legs to hitch them up his waist. He stretches himself over her until their chests press together, elbows on either side of her head. He whispers a kiss across her forehead, combs his fingers through her hair carefully.

"Every night," he mumbles, "since I was old enough to... It's always been you..."

She moves her hands down his chest, around his back, pulls him in closer to press her lips against his shoulder. "Go faster," she murmurs, arches up toward him. "Deeper—you're not even all the way in."

"I didn't want to hurt you," he chokes out, sounding embarrassed. "You're so small..."

She pinches his skin. "Don't underestimate me, Bertholdt."

It's funny, how much he's been holding back.

When he pushes himself in the rest of the way, she swears her lungs stop working for a second. "Sh—_shit_, Bertholdt—" she grits out between her teeth, curling her toes and digging her nails into his back. She knows he's long, had caught sight of him for a moment after he'd stripped off his clothes in that nervous way he does most things with her around; _she _failed to gauge _how _long. He fills her up completely, she can tell that much.

"I'm sorry," he breathes out, fingers coiling her hair up in a loose fist. "Does it hurt?"

"No." She shifts herself beneath him until she's comfortable enough. "Keep going," she urges.

He pulls out slowly, tenses as she tilts her hips up for him, and then pushes back in halfway; his fingers tighten in her hair when she meets him a little too quickly in the middle. The weak springs in the mattress sigh beneath their movements, and she can feel the sheets begin to stick to her back with her sweat. One of his hands skims down her side, grasping her thigh firmly and pulling it up higher on his waist. The other hand cradles the back of her head, turning her to capture her lips in a wet kiss—all slick tongues and clicking teeth.

Something hot and electrifying twists up inside of her, through her nerves and veins and all, with every thrust he gives and every sound he makes. It flares up like a storm in the pit of her stomach and licks its way up like flames across her body—once, she thinks she may have cried something or another. "_God_," she gasps at some point, the calloused pad of his thumb rolling over her nipple gently, "_more_..."

_More_ could've meant a number of things, but Bertholdt has that strange ability to just _know _what she wants, and so he gives her _more_. Harder or faster or deeper or maybe even gentler, she doesn't exactly know. She is consumed by the feel of his tongue searing across the line of her throat, the rough-press of his fingers across her spine, the broken pants escaping his mouth, the pleasure stringing itself up throughout her system, her bones, or her muscles—she can't quite tell—it devours her whole and leaves nothing behind.

"Touch me," she begs, lifts her back off the bed and grips his arm tight. "Please, I can't take it—" What that means, she doesn't know; he listens, so she doesn't question much more past the curious way he wets his lips, sucks her nipple into the blistering heat of his mouth, slides his hands down her thighs; doesn't question past the fact that he _obeys_.

A sound resonates between them, something wet and slick, and she looks down to watch him disappear inside of her over and over. His hand looks large, cupping her breast, splaying on her stomach, sliding down to her core. He rubs the tip of his finger very carefully against the little button at the apex of her folds, hesitates when she cries out and writhes up toward him. "A—Annie...?"

"Do it again," she breathes out, taking a hold of his wrist and guiding his hand back down.

He does it again, and again, for as long as she keeps pleading him to, until she finally falls apart beneath him—those flames scorching all across her skin and roaring in her ears—and he has to close his mouth over hers to silence her scream.

She feels him finish inside of her—something warm spilling inside of her, _burning_—holding her as close as he can and sighing her name in her ear; funny, he's quiet even in the throes of passion. And then he melts around her, all mellow breaths and limp limbs. He rolls over before he can crush her beneath him, throwing an arm over his eyes as he catches his breath.

The moonlight ripples across his skin, paints jagged shapes into every crevice it can find. The sheen of sweat covering his body catches the light, makes him glow, draws her in; she wants to be near him.

Annie never likes anyone being near her, but she can't quite bring herself to feel the same with him.

She drags herself across the bed, clumsy and graceless and lethargic, to lay her ear on his chest, right over his heart to hear the beating underneath. His arms move around her cautiously, as if she's a delicate little bird he can break at any time.

Maybe he can. She doesn't know. She doesn't _want _to know.

She falls asleep to the rhythm, and smiles just a little as some afterthought of a realization dawns on her.

She hadn't quite managed to ruin him.

He's seems more revitalized than anything.

~~...~~X~~...~~

In the morning, she flops over in search of his warmth, but only finds an empty space. For a second, bolting up in bed and grasping at her throbbing heart, she thinks he's left her.

This won't be the first time a man used her for his own selfish purposes—and so what if she's the one who initiated it this time, no one fucking said it was only for a night, that little _fuck—_but she can't _believe _that _he_, of all people, would do something like this. She lets it sink in, rakes air in through her teeth and clenches her fists up tight. The world seems to shrink in on itself and this scares her more than it should; it only happens when she's not paying enough attention, and her senses are on hyper-drive right now and she isn't sure what this means and _damn it _she wishes she can take everything back but _doesn't _at the same time and—

The door creaks open, a blinding sliver of yellow light slips across the wooden floors and nearly swipes her eyes but it's shut out again before it can. He's standing there by the door, his head almost higher than the frame itself; he wears only the white pants of his uniform and his t-shirt, and, for some reason, the fact that he hasn't tucked it in and that he hasn't even bothered to comb down his messy hair, makes her cheeks tinge and her fingers tremble.

(The fact itself is meaningless, but it makes her feel a little better. For some reason.)

His attention is directed at his hands, which are out of her view as he's turned, still, toward the door. She watches the creases in the back of his shirt shift over his shoulder blades, counts every cow-licked lock of hair she can find and tries to recall which ones her own fingers might've caused; she flexes her hands, once, twice, and then drops them back into the sheets.

A bird chirps somewhere outside.

"You left," she says softly, voice almost lost in the calm of the silence.

He jumps, just a little, and turns to look at her over his shoulder. His eyes are wide, almost stricken, and all she can focus on is how _green _they look when the sunlight sneaking through the window washes over them briefly; how they shine like jewels. He looks down, furrowing his brow, almost guiltily. "I—I'm sorry. I thought you'd still be asleep."

She clutches at the blanket draped over her lap, glowering down at her hands. "I was worried," she mutters, but does not elaborate on it. The reason itself is more selfish than she's willing to admit at the moment.

He steps forward, pauses, and then moves around to the side of the bed where there's enough space for him to sit. "I wanted to make it up to you," he mumbles, taking a bundle of sheets and moving it aside. The mattress sinks under his weight, and her whole body aches to be held by him.

It's funny, she thinks, because she's usually so revolted by the idea of being touched by _anyone_.

"For last night," he continues when she doesn't speak; his voice has grown smaller, uncertain. She turns her head sharply, surprised.

He hides his face when she looks at him.

He presses a cluster of flowers into her open palm gently—they're small and colorful, the kind that grow deep in the shades of massive trees with roots deeply embedded in the earth—and moves to stand from the bed. She transfers the flowers to her other hand, hooks her arm through his to pull him back to her, and brushes a kiss against his shoulder, his ear when he turns toward her, his reddening cheek. "What...?" he begins, and then stops breathing when she reaches his lips.

"You don't need to make up for anything," she says, pulling away. "And, if you did, this is the worst way you can possibly do just that." But that's a lie. It's the absolute _best _thing he can do, in her book, and she isn't sure how he knew that. Bertholdt has always had that strange ability to just _know _what she wants.

He sits back against the wall, tucking the pillows up for comfort. He doesn't meet her gaze, no matter how intensely she glares. "Yes, I do," he mutters, fiddling with a corner of the sheets. "It... It was my first time, Annie... It must've been terrible for you."

A laugh bursts out from her chest before she can stop it, and his eyes snap to hers quickly in shock. She stifles it with a hand and turns her head away to compose herself. "Men are so stupid," she says, pinches one violet petal between her fingers and rubs the velvet beneath her thumb carefully.

"I'm sorry," he says again, bringing his knees up to wrap his arms around.

She notes that he looks painfully vulnerable like this.

"You're no exception," she proceeds to say, lifting a single flower up to admire in the light; this one is pink, with white at the edges. "Which brings me to question why I wanted you at all." She meets his gaze evenly, finds he's taken up this sad expression that makes her insides twist uncomfortably, and tries to remember a time he's ever looked at her like that. "You're so,"—she grasps within herself for the proper words to say, cannot come up with anything more than a few measly pieced together comparisons that do not do him justice—"..._wrong_. For me. You're everything I'm not supposed to like, so completely my opposite I don't even know if we can function together at all."

He watches her pick a split leaf from the stem of one flower, a yellow one he found near a pond. He's not sure what to say. His mind remains blank save for the image of her, cloaked in the thin sheets; one side is sliding down her chest precariously and he tries not to focus on it too much. "Then why did you want to try?" he asks faintly, tugs at his own sleeve nervously when she glances at him.

"Because I'm tired of trying to fill in some role I don't belong in," she replies honestly, knowing he won't entirely understand her answer. "I want to do whatever _I _want to do. Even if I'll never be perfect again because of it."

His eyes find hers slowly, and he does not look confused. Not the way he probably should. "You don't have to be perfect, Annie," he mumbles, almost too quietly for her to hear.

She lets a moment pass between them, unsure of what to say. His words weigh too much on her shoulders. She only makes a sound, neither in agreement or disagreement.

"For the record," she tells him, leaning her head against his arm, "it was _my _first time, too. And you didn't do too bad."

A flustered sound leaves him, a mix between a chuckle and a sigh. "You're being nice again, Annie."

"But I'm not lying," she mutters, gathering up the flowers in her hands. "I appreciate the thought, though." She bunches them up and turns them up to the light. "They're pretty."

He's quiet for a few seconds, sliding his arm out from between them to let her rest her cheek on his chest. "They reminded me of you," he says simply.

He can't possibly know what that does to her, what it means or how it changes things.

The entire world has been knocked off its axis and he doesn't even realize it. Just because of some stupid words he probably hoped would make her happy—although his tone is utterly genuine and she can't pick any trace of dishonesty in it.

She can probably tell him all the things that remind her of him every day—like the soil beneath her feet, like trees towering or ponds swirling or blistering summer skin and a voice like morning mist in early winters—but decides it's better left unsaid.

Bertholdt is better at reading silence than he is at deciphering words.

~~...~~X~~...~~

"You don't have to tell me," he whispers into the crook of her neck, his fingers skimming down the curve of her waist hesitantly, "but I'd still like to know."

She is already too keyed up by his touches, wants nothing more than his mouth on her skin, so his already confusing words only serve to agitate her more at the moment. "Do you really think this is the time to be getting all...philosophical?" she asks, combing back his hair from his forehead.

He smiles, faintly, but his eyes are somber. "I was scared," he murmurs, tucking some strands behind her ear gently. "You wouldn't talk to us..." He looks down, at the space between them, and suddenly his words are rushing out, "You were so quiet, you seemed so sad and I kept wondering why, and I couldn't ask you, I wasn't brave enough, and even Reiner—"

Life has a strange method for torturing her. Why it would choose _this _way to bring all of it back, she'll never understand, but it has to be the cruelest.

"Ah," she says, and it comes out sounding more strained than it should have.

He catches it immediately, and hurries to comfort her. "You don't have to tell me, Annie, if you don't want to, honest—I just... I'm sorry, I'll drop it—"

"An older trainee had me up against a tree one night," she recounts, letting her voice fall into a monotone that gives no hint as to what she's feeling; it's a turmoil, really, but she doesn't want him to know that. "I was fourteen at the time, I think he was eighteen—older than you now, I believe—he caught me while I was out on a walk, trying to clear my mind. I took those walks often back then, you know. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary for me to run into someone while I did." She shrugs, notes his brow has furrowed in consternation, perhaps wondering what she's going on about.

His hands remain settled on her sides, comfortably burning into her skin.

It's only a small consolation in the grand scheme of things.

"He told me wanted to do something fun," she continues, reaches out and takes one of his hands and place it on her chest, over her heartbeat; it must be pounding, but she doesn't feel its affects quite yet. "And then he just kinda...did what he wanted... Well, I guess that's not entirely true. He might've wanted to do more, but he didn't." She blinks and looks at his face closely. His eyes are wide. "I'm not sure if that makes it any better."

He doesn't say anything.

"I didn't understand what was happening, why he was touching me. Nobody taught me what to do in situations like those." She feels his grip change on her hip subtly. "Afterward, I don't remember, but I woke up in my bed. I don't know how he knew where I slept. Maybe one of the older girls told him."

She feels him take his other hand off of her, opens her mouth to question why and then snaps it shut when she sees him clench it into a tight fist. He's shaking, and she quietly wonders what he'll do.

He's so large—the world looks small around him, so much smaller than she knows it to be—that this cramped space could never possibly contain all of his rage, as she sees it boiling inside of him, flaring, growing.

(_Subsiding_ when she pets his hair carefully.)

"Why didn't you tell me—us—Reiner and I? We could've... We could've done something about it," he says, and his eyes are alight with a fire she hardly recognizes. It suits him strange, she thinks, makes the color shine even in the darkness the room provides.

She shakes her head staunchly. "I didn't want to tell you."

"But why?" he asks. His hands cradle her face, thumbs smoothing over her cheekbones tenderly. She feels trapped like this—the mattress presses her up and his body presses her down; two conflicting forces, but she feels so warm and safe she wants to run and never move at the same time and it confuses her intensely. She feels trapped, but not the trapped she usually feels.

(_This _trapped meant Bertholdt, and that wasn't so bad, for some reason.)

"I didn't want you guys to think I was any different from you," she says honestly.

He smiles, brokenly, and mumbles back, "You've always been different from us, Annie."

Her heart somehow skips a beat or two.

"It doesn't mean you're any worse or better," he says, moving his fingertips back toward her hair. "Just different."

She gives a breathless laugh.

_So you've always known, huh? _

His eyes meet hers slowly, and their expression is tender. "You should've told us, Annie. You shouldn't have gone through it alone like you did."

The color of his eyes swirls like ripples in a pond—smooth movement, uninhibited—and the words are stolen from her mouth easily.

"I would've protected you..."

~~...~~X~~...~~

"Does it make you remember?" he asks near her ear. He speaks no louder than a soft murmur; the walls of the shed are thin and feeble enough their nerves and drawn taut. He has her pinned to the furthest wall, his back to the door—it may be because he's afraid they'll be caught and can hide her from sight in the event that they do and _not _because he's actually trying to hurt her the way her mind keeps trying to make her believe—his hands on her thighs, his mouth on her skin.

"No," she replies easily, tracing her fingertip along his jawline. "This is completely different."

Her clothes pool at the ground and his shirt crumples up somewhere near his feet—he makes her keep her undershirt on, because, "_Someone might catch us, Annie, they'll see you_,"—he's only pushed his pants down enough to free his length and this somehow makes it more exciting and she can't explain why. She locks her ankles around his waist and clings onto his shoulders and almost gives a whine when he slides himself into her. His breath is hitched and choppy and his rhythm jolts and snaps against her but it's never quite rough, it only skirts the very edges of it.

This is completely different.

The wood doesn't leave splinters in her back.

"Does it make _you _remember?" she asks, flattens her tongue over his nipple and catches droplets of sweat rolling over his warm-colored skin. He tastes faintly sweet, like sugar or honey or something along those lines. For some reason, she thought he would taste as bitter as the sap the trees excrete.

His fingers press into her hips, hitching her up further and sliding an arm under her to support her weight. It changes the angle, he connects with her different; she stifles her noises against his throat. "No," he responds breathlessly, lowering his head to kiss her temple. "I only remember when I'm alone."

Her toes curl when he strokes her back, calloused fingertips pausing at every notch in her spine, as if memorizing her lines through touch alone. "What do you think about?" she asks, arching toward him until her breasts crush against the hard expanse of his chest.

"Mostly,"—his hand moves up to the nape of her neck, and she shivers as his thumb presses tight into the center, tracing the spot they both know can kill her; kill them _both_ depending on who was asked, he couldn't live without her, she knows that by now—"...hurting him. For what he did to you."

His hips rock upward and the pace he's set deepens until he's almost entirely inside before he pulls back out. She digs her heels into his back to keep him there a little longer. "You make it sound as if he murdered someone," she says, and then regrets saying that at all.

He doesn't skip a beat. "He did much worse."

"No—"

His lips brush over her forehead very gently. "He did much, _much_ worse."

She can't really tell if he's exaggerating, but her chest feels warm and her throat feels constricted.

When she finishes, she pretends she doesn't feel him wiping the tears from her eyes.

~~...~~X~~...~~

She doesn't understand it. They've both undoubtedly done _much worse_, and yet _this _is what haunts her the most, _this _is what torments him most—she remembers she wanted to ruin him once, and hopes this isn't it; this is the worst possible way, she doesn't _want_ this to be it—and it makes no sense because, "_Fuck, you and I killed people, how the hell is this worse?_"

She knows how broken the human body can look when all the bones have been cracked, when all the blood has gushed out, when it is crushed in her own hands—_not my own, those aren't my hands, they can't be my hands—_and she knows how bright the color of blood can look stained into the grass or splattered on buildings.

She's done much, _much _worse, and yet he can still look her in the eye and tell her it isn't as bad as some boy she doesn't even remember the face of touching her, when she didn't even try to stop it from happening.

To compare it to murder seems nonsensical to her.

She doesn't understand it. It claws its way into her mind and topples everything over, flips and turns the world upside down and expects her to fix it right back up so it can do it again. She agonizes over the fact and shoves him up against the wall and demands to know why, _why can't you just let it go, this is why I never told you, I shouldn't have told you, why, why does it even matter_?

He smiles a broken smile.

_Because it's you, Annie_.

She is very suddenly reminded why the enemy _cannot be human._

Bertholdt is painfully _human_.

~~...~~X~~...~~

**A.N.****: What.**

**This is what happens when I don't plan out stories. **

**Well, I hope you liked it. Thanks for reading, bye!**

**(Am I in a hurry to leave? No, what the hell? I have to work on my other Beruani story, so.)**


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